Functional Service Provider (FSP)

Premier Insight 246: Transfer and Re-Engage: A Powerful Path to Flexibility and Cost Savings

Functional outsourcing can produce significant savings and greatly increase flexibility in assigning resources. But any big change in staffing requires care to avoid personnel disruptions, keep projects on track, and comply with laws governing use of contract employees.

Continuity matters

Through its transfer and re-engagement strategy, Premier Research helps customers realize the productivity and cost benefits of outsourcing while effectively mitigating the risks. A pharmaceutical company looking to farm out a major support function followed this path to personnel cost savings without compromising project continuity or giving up operational control.

The sponsor employed a team of financial specialists who managed investigator payments. The team had been in place a long time, and the client was concerned that changes could lead to costly disruption. Working with the payment team’s manager, we re-badged its members as full-time Premier Research employees — then assigned them back to the company through a dedicated functional service provider arrangement.

Transfer and re-engagement allows sponsors to quickly scale staffing up and down as their portfolios evolve, all while retaining operational control, technology and process ownership, and access to trial data and systems. If needs for therapeutic expertise change, we can assign and train new resources from our deep talent pool.

Pay only for productive time

Clients are invoiced only for productive time, and we absorb the cost of underutilization, employee benefits, and other overhead. As a global CRO, we can staff projects with people from around the world for maximum efficiency. When two U.S.-based members of the payment team resigned, we filled those positions with Premier Research employees in low-cost Eastern Europe for additional savings.

These arrangements can also steer sponsors clear of violating strengthened U.S. labor laws prohibiting long-term engagement of contingent workers.

Transfer and re-engagement: a powerful tool for reducing resource costs while keeping you in full control.